About a dozen men stand shoulder to shoulder against a long, bubble-gum pink table at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Jackson Boulevard on a hot Wednesday afternoon. The table is decorated with strings of multicolored pennants and bright, hand-painted signs, luring passersby on their way to Taste of Chicago a block to the east. As “Sweet Home Alabama” pours from homemade speakers suspended on metal rods decorated with red and yellow plastic pinwheels, 48-year-old Cecil Locke, the table’s creator and proprietor, goes head-to-head against a man half his age in a serious game of chess.
“Should I let ’em know, Cecil?” calls a regular named Melvin, who’s in the middle of a game a few mats down. “Should I yell it out?”
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John King, a former hospital worker who moves between the homes of relatives and a homeless shelter, helps Locke keep order and collect money. Bills go into two slots in the table, which lead to collection boxes screwed underneath. Paddles attached with key-chain coils are used to mash the bills in.
One of 11 children, Locke was born in East Chicago Heights in 1959. His father worked at a cookie factory and did odd jobs around the neighborhood; his mother was a portrait painter. “She taught us how to be creative,” he says, and from her he developed his maxim: “Artwork is not just pretty pictures–it’s a way of life.”
In the spring of 2002, during Locke’s fourth year there, Harper Court management got the chess players booted. “They are rude, they are irritating, and they are non-customers,” Rich Padnos, owner of the Wheels & Things bicycle shop, told the Chicago Tribune. Undaunted, Locke went to work building a bigger, better table and planning his next move.
Locke and King moved to their current spot at the northwest border of Grant Park after the City Council clamped down on street performers on Michigan Avenue and in Millennium Park last winter. Locke was peeved but says his business hasn’t suffered. In fact he plans to build another cart next spring, so next summer he and King can work the park and festivals at the same time. If that works out, he’d consider building another table to rent out to others or to be managed by his 15-year-old son, Antwan.
